World Trade Center:Sept 2001
Early September 2001: Pakistani Student Says WTC Towers ‘Won’t Be Here Next Week’ New Utrecht High School. National Geographic At New Utrecht High School, in Brooklyn, New York City, about one week before 9/11, a Pakistani student in a bilingual class points at the WTC during a heated political argument and declares, “Look at those two buildings. They won’t be here next week.” The teacher notifies New York police after 9/11, who in turn notify the FBI. The status of the FBI investigation into this incident is unknown as of early October 2001. YORK DAILY NEWS, 10/12/2001 Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Early September 2001: Iranian Inmate in Germany Warns of Imminent Attack on WTC An Iranian man known as Ali S. in a German jail awaiting deportation repeatedly phones US law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the WTC in early September. He calls it “an attack that will change the world.” After a month of badgering his prison guards, he is finally able to call the White House 14 times in the days before the attack. He then tries to send a fax to President Bush, but is denied permission hours before the 9/11 attacks. German police later confirm the calls. Prosecutors later will say Ali had no foreknowledge and his forebodings were just a strange coincidence. They will say he is mentally unstable. PRESSE-AGENTUR (HAMBURG), 9/13/2001; ANANOVA, 9/14/2001; SUNDAY HERALD (GLASGOW), 9/16/2001; OTTAWA CITIZEN, 9/17/2001 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Ali S., George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Between September 1 and September 7, 2001: Silverstein Properties Takes over Control of the World Trade Center Alan Reiss. Eric Weeks In the first week of September 2001, the real estate development and investment firm Silverstein Properties assumes control of the World Trade Center. The company had acquired the lease to operate the Twin Towers from the New York Port Authority in late July (see July 24, 2001). It has already begun managing the facility with its own executives. Selected Port Authority employees, including Alan Reiss, the director of the World Trade Center, have been assisting the firm during a three-month transition period. But in the weeks prior to 9/11, according to the New York Times, “Silverstein Properties asked Mr. Reiss to let it more fully operate everything from safety systems to tenant relations.” YORK TIMES, 9/13/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/14/2001; WEISS, 2003, PP. 338; 9/11 COMMISSION, 11/3/2003 ; 9/11 COMMISSION, 5/18/2004 Entity Tags: Alan Reiss, Silverstein Properties, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Between September 3, 2001 and September 7, 2001: WTC Structural Engineer Says Trade Center Designed for 707 Crashing Into It Leslie Robertson. Publicity photo Leslie Robertson, one of the two original structural engineers for the World Trade Center, is asked at a conference in Frankfurt, Germany what he had done to protect the Twin Towers from terrorist attacks. He replies, “I designed it for a 707 to smash into it,” though does not elaborate further. TRIBUNE, 9/12/2001; KNIGHT RIDDER, 9/12/2001 The Twin Towers were in fact the first structures outside the military and nuclear industries designed to resist the impact of a jet airplane. 3/2002; FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, 5/1/2002, PP. 1-17 The Boeing 707 was the largest in use when the towers were designed. Robertson conducted a study in late 1964, to calculate the effect of a 707 weighing 263,000 pounds and traveling at 180 mph crashing into one of the towers. He concluded that the tower would remain standing. However, no official report of his study has ever surfaced publicly. AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 138-139, 366 A previous analysis, carried out early in 1964, calculated that the towers would handle the impact of a 707 traveling at 600 mph without collapsing (see February 27, 1993). In 2002, though, Robertson will write, “To the best of our knowledge, little was known about the effects of a fire from such an aircraft, and no designs were prepared for that circumstance.” 3/2002 The planes that hit the WTC on 9/11 are 767s, which are almost 20 percent heavier than 707s. AMERICAN, 10/9/2001; NEW YORKER, 11/19/2001 Entity Tags: Leslie Robertson, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 4, 2001: Secret Embedded Messages Help Show Milan Al-Qaeda Have 9/11 Foreknowledge At least one member of the al-Qaeda cell in Milan, Italy, apparently uses steganography, a method of encoding messages within computerized photographs. In Milan’s Via Quaranta mosque in Milan, frequented by Egyptian al-Qaeda operative Mahmoud Es Sayed, pictures of the World Trade Center that have steganographic messages in them are saved on a computer. A number of other pictures of world leaders and pornography are also manipulated in a similar manner. These pictures will not be discovered until months after 9/11, but they help suggest that some in the Milan cell had foreknowledge of the 9/11 plot. Es Sayed had been wiretapped on previous occasions, and was heard making comments suggesting he had such foreknowledge (see August 12, 2000) (see January 24, 2001). His current whereabouts are unknown. NEWS, 5/8/2003 Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Mahmoud Es Sayed, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 4, 2001: Israeli Company Moves Out of WTC The Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co. moves their North American headquarters from the 16th floor of the WTC to Norfolk, Virginia, one week before the 9/11 attacks. The Israeli government owns 49 percent of the company. 9/4/2001 Zim announced the move and its date six months earlier. 4/3/2001 More than 200 workers had just been moved out; about ten are still in the building making final moving arrangements on 9/11, but escape. POST, 9/13/2001; JOURNAL OF COMMERCE, 10/18/2001 The move leaves only one Israeli company, ClearForest, with 18 employees, in the WTC on 9/11. The four or five employees in the building at the time manage to escape. POST, 9/13/2001 One year later, a Zim ship is impounded while attempting to ship Israeli military equipment to Iran; it is speculated that this is done with the knowledge of Israel. FRANCE-PRESSE, 3/29/2002 Entity Tags: Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co., World Trade Center, ClearForest Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline September 6, 2001: New York Student Forecasts Destruction of WTC Antoinette DiLorenzo, teaching English to a class of Pakistani immigrants, asks a student gazing out the window, “What are you looking at?” The student points towards the WTC, and says, “Do you see those two buildings? They won’t be standing there next week.” At the time, nothing is thought of it, but on September 13, the FBI will interview all the people in the classroom and confirm the event. The FBI later places the boy’s family under surveillance but apparently is unable to find a connection to the 9/11 plot. An MSNBC reporter later sets out to disprove this “urban myth,” but to his surprise, finds all the details of the story are confirmed. The fact that the family members are recent immigrants from Pakistan might mean the information came from Pakistan. 10/12/2001 Supposedly, on November 9, 2001, the same student predicts there will be a plane crash on November 12. On that day, American Airlines Flight 587 will crash on takeoff from New York, killing 260 people. Investigators will later determine that the crash is accidental. One official at the school later says many Arab-American students have come forward with their own stories about having prior knowledge before 9/11: “Kids are telling us that the attacks didn’t surprise them. This was a nicely protected little secret that circulated in the community around here.” 9/10/2002 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Antoinette DiLorenzo Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 6-10, 2001: Suspicious Trading on Stocks of Two Large WTC Tenants The Chicago Board Options Exchange sees suspicious trading on Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, two of the largest WTC tenants. In the first week of September, an average of 27 put option contracts in its shares are bought each day. Then the total for the three days before the attacks is 2,157. Merrill Lynch, another WTC tenant, see 12,215 put options bought between September 7-10, when the previous days had seen averages of 252 contracts a day. 10/14/2001 Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, speaking of the trading on Morgan Stanley and other companies, says, “This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence.” NEWS, 9/20/2001 Entity Tags: Morgan Stanley, World Trade Center, Dylan Ratigan, American Airlines, Chicago Board Options Exchange Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 7, 2001: New Security Director Criticizes Poor Security at the World Trade Center Former FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill recently started his new job as director of security at the World Trade Center (see August 23, 2001). From the outset, he has engrossed himself in discovering what security systems are in place there, and what will be needed in future. On this day, he runs into Rodney Leibowitz, a friend of his, and complains to him about the very poor standard of security at the Twin Towers. For instance, he mentions that, even though the complex receives bomb threats on a daily basis, its telephone system does not feature caller identification. 2003, PP. 354 AND 358 The Trade Center has in fact recently been on a heightened security alert, due to numerous phone threats (see Late August-September 10, 2001). 9/12/2001 Leibowitz is the president and CEO of a company called First Responder Inc., which provides bioterrorism preparedness training to healthcare professionals. RESPONDER INC., 1/14/2004 Until the 9/11 attacks intervene, First Responder Inc. is in fact scheduled to send in a team to conduct a threat assessment of the World Trade Center for O’Neill on September 15. 2003, PP. 52 Entity Tags: John O’Neill, First Responder Inc., World Trade Center, Rodney Leibowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Shortly Before September 11, 2001: WTC Tower Has Security Increased The day after 9/11, Newsday will report that, according to security guard Hermina Jones, bulletproof windows and fireproof doors have recently been installed in a 22nd-floor computer command center in one of the WTC towers. Jones will claim that this was done to secure the tower from aerial attacks, though it is not clear if this is merely her post-9/11 opinion or if she had evidence to believe that was the reason for the improvement. 9/12/2001 Entity Tags: World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 10, 2001: New WTC Security Director Warns of Danger of ‘Something Big’ John O’Neill, who is later described by the New Yorker magazine as the FBI’s “most committed tracker of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network of terrorists,” recently retired from the bureau and started a new job as director of security at the World Trade Center (see August 23, 2001). YORKER, 1/14/2002 On this day he meets up with his old friend Raymond Powers, the former New York Police Department chief of operations, to discuss security procedures. Their conversation turns to Osama bin Laden. According to journalist and author Murray Weiss, “just as he had reiterated since 1995 to any official in Washington who would listen, O’Neill said he was sure bin Laden would attack on American soil, and expected him to target the Twin Towers again.” He says to Powers, “It’s going to happen, and it looks like something big is brewing.” 2003, PP. 355 AND 359-360 Later on, O’Neill goes out in the evening with his friends Robert Tucker and Jerome Hauer. Again, he starts discussing bin Laden. He tells his friends, “We’re due. And we’re due for something big.” He says, “Some things have happened in Afghanistan. I don’t like the way things are lining up in Afghanistan.” This is probably a reference to the assassination of Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud the previous day (see September 9, 2001). He adds, “I sense a shift, and I think things are going to happen.” Asked when, he replies, “I don’t know, but soon.” YORKER, 1/14/2002; PBS, 10/3/2002 O’Neill will be in his office on the 34th floor of the South Tower the following morning when the first attack occurs, and dies when the WTC collapses. 2003, PP. 366; FOX NEWS, 8/31/2004 Entity Tags: John O’Neill, Ahmed Shah Massoud, Jerry Hauer, World Trade Center, Raymond Powers, Osama bin Laden, Robert Tucker Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline September 10, 2001: Atta Allegedly Visits the WTC to Enter Coordinates Into GPS Device; One Report Claims Mistaken Identity Credit card receipts later discovered by the FBI apparently show that alleged lead hijacker Mohamed Atta is in Manhattan on this day. According to FBI agents, he visits the observation deck on the 107th floor of the south WTC tower. CNN will report, “Officials speculate Atta may have been in New York… to program the towers’ location into a global positioning system.” A global positioning system (GPS) uses satellite technology to pinpoint any location on Earth. According to the FBI, Atta bought himself such a device, costing about $500, by mail order. NEWS, 5/22/2002; CNN, 5/22/2002 Investigators will reportedly consider this trip necessary, “because they believe the hijackers were too inexperienced to handle the jumbo jets without help.” YORK DAILY NEWS, 5/22/2002 BBC reporter Jane Corbin points out that Atta was also witnessed at Boston’s Logan Airport the previous morning (see September 9, 2001), where he could have entered start-point co-ordinates for his 9/11 flight into the GPS device. 2003, PP. 230 However, there is no mention of Atta’s New York visit in the 9/11 Commission Report. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Atta spent the previous night at the Milner Hotel in Boston, and then shortly after noon on this day is in Boston where he picks up Abdulaziz Alomari and drives to Portland, Maine. CONGRESS, 9/26/2002 The 200-mile journey from Boston to New York takes approximately four hours by car. 5/25/2006 So if Mueller’s account is correct, it seems difficult to comprehend Atta having time to travel to New York, go up the WTC, make purchases on his credit card, and then return to Boston, all in the space of one morning. An article in the New York Post will in fact claim that the person in Manhattan was “a distinguished renal and gene specialist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital” in Baltimore, Maryland. This man, who is also called Mohamed Atta, happened to have visited New York in the days before 9/11, “for a whirlwind weekend with his new bride.” The article claims that it had erroneously been reported that alleged hijacker Mohamed Atta “was casing the Twin Towers days before Sept. 11—even after the FBI concluded it was just the kidney doctor, who had planned to take his wife to Windows on the World for dinner in the North Tower.” YORK POST, 5/28/2002 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Before September 11, 2001: NEADS Staff Briefed on Possibility of Plane Hitting WTC Staff members at NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) are apparently briefed on the possibility of terrorists deliberately crashing a plane into the World Trade Center. According to author Lynn Spencer, when Trey Murphy—a former US Marine who is now a weapons controller at NEADS—first sees the television footage on September 11 showing that a plane has hit the WTC, the news will bring to mind one of his briefings: “What if a terrorist flies an airplane with a weapon of mass destruction into the World Trade Center? It had always been one of the military’s big fears.… The image on the television screen certainly reminded him of his briefing.” 2008, PP. 179 It is also later reported that, in the two years prior to 9/11, NORAD conducts exercises simulating terrorists crashing hijacked aircraft into targets that include the WTC (see Between September 1999 and September 10, 2001). TODAY, 4/18/2004 Yet, in May 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will claim, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center… that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile” (see May 16, 2002). HOUSE, 5/16/2002 And in 2004, NORAD commander General Ralph Eberhart will say, “Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised.” TODAY, 4/18/2004 Entity Tags: Trey Murphy, World Trade Center, Northeast Air Defense Sector Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 10, 2001: Suspicious Passengers on Flight to Boston Ask about WTC The night before 9/11, two men are observed behaving suspiciously on a United Airlines flight from San Diego to Boston. This is according Elaine Lawrence, who is one of the plane’s flight attendants. She later recalls that the men—one who appears Middle Eastern, the other Caucasian—upgrade from coach to first class, and then sit “on the left side of the plane, seats 3A and 3B,” near the cockpit door. She will comment: “It was really weird. They didn’t eat, they didn’t sleep, they didn’t watch the movie. Why upgrade?” Furthermore, she recalls: “When we were getting close to Boston they asked if we could see the World Trade Center towers. ‘Do we see the towers?’ the guy kept asking. I told him we wouldn’t be going by New York.” After the attacks the following day, she will call the FBI and inform them of this incident. Lawrence was in fact originally scheduled to be an attendant on Flight 175—the second plane to hit the WTC—on 9/11. However, as she is planning to go on vacation, she has traded shifts with another flight attendant, Amy Jarret (see Shortly Before September 11, 2001). FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/23/2001 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Elaine Lawrence Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Sept 11 aftwe sep 11 Shortly After September 11, 2001: City Officials Make Decision to Scrap Remaining WTC Steel Michael Burton. PBS Following the World Trade Center collapses, a decision is made to quickly transport the remaining structural steel to scrap yards, to be shipped abroad and melted down for reuse. Consequently, virtually all of it is disposed of before investigators trying to assess why the WTC collapsed can examine it. Michael Burton and other officials at the Department of Design and Construction—the New York City agency overseeing the cleanup operation (see (September 11, 2001-May 2002))—are responsible for making this decision. Burton clears it with Richard Tomasetti of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, the prime consultant on the cleanup job. However, referring to the subsequent WTC investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (see August 21, 2002), Tomasetti will later admit that had he known the direction that investigations into the collapses would take, he would have taken a different stand. 2002, PP. 30; GLANZ AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 330 AND 396 Authors and New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton write that Michael Burton, “who had become the effective czar for the cleanup job, had made it clear that he cared very little about engineering subtleties like the question of why the towers first stood, then collapsed on September 11. ‘We know why they fell,’ he said. ‘Because they flew two planes into the towers.’ But he was deeply immersed in the details of hauling steel out of the debris pile.” AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 299 Much of the WTC steel will be shipped to India, China, and other Asian countries for recycling (see September 12-October 2001). Entity Tags: New York City Department of Design and Construction, World Trade Center, Michael Burton, Richard Tomasetti Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 12, 2001: FEMA Assembles Team to Analyze WTC Collapses, but Investigation Is Severely Hampered W. Gene Corley. ASCE The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its contractor, Greenhorne and O’Mara, Inc., from Greenbelt, Maryland, begin putting together a Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT), to conduct a formal analysis of the World Trade Center collapses, and produce a report of its findings. FEMA routinely deploys such teams following disasters, like floods or hurricanes. The 23-member BPAT team set up at the WTC collapse site is assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and headed by Dr. W. Gene Corley of Construction Technologies Laboratories in Skokie, Illinois. Corley was previously the principal investigator for FEMA’s study of the Murrah Building, in Oklahoma City in 1995. YORKER, 11/12/2001 BPAT team members are based nationwide and have to communicate with each other mostly by phone, as they continue with their regular jobs. While some of them are being paid for their efforts, others are working on the investigation voluntarily. They are told not to speak with reporters, under threat of dismissal from the team, supposedly because of the delicacy of the subject with which they are dealing. The BPAT team receives $600,000 of funding from FEMA, plus approximately $500,000 in ASCE in-kind contributions. YORK TIMES, 12/25/2001; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/14/2002; US CONGRESS, 3/6/2002 The team will have great difficulty accessing the collapse site and evidence they want to see (see March 6, 2002). They will be unable to get FEMA to obtain such basic data as detailed blueprints of the WTC buildings. FEMA will also refuse to allow them to make appeals to the public for photos and videos of the towers that might aid their investigation. Bureaucratic restrictions will often prevent them from making forensic inspections at Ground Zero, interviewing witnesses, or getting important evidence, like recorded distress calls from people who were trapped in the towers. AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 330 The end product of their investigation is the FEMA World Trade Center Building Performance Study, released in May 2002 (see May 1, 2002). Entity Tags: World Trade Center, W. Gene Corley, American Society of Civil Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Greenhorne and O’Mara, Inc. Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 12-14, 2001: Gruesome Remains Found at Ground Zero, but Supposedly No Black Boxes John McCole Robson Books Some gruesome remains are discovered in the World Trade Center ruins: Investigators find a pair of severed hands bound together with plastic handcuffs on a nearby building. They are believed to have belonged to a flight attendant. 9/15/2001 Honorary firefighter Michael Bellone and two other recovery workers discover the body of an attendant from American Airlines Flight 11. Reportedly, the men’s digging efforts reveal “a blue skirt, then one side of a body, and finally a pair of wings still attached to the lapel of a woman’s jacket.” 2003, PP. 140; DAILY STANDARD (GRAND LAKE), 9/11/2006 Other reports describe the discovery of the body of a flight attendant with her hands bound. Presumably they are referring to the same remains. 9/13/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 9/15/2001 There are reports of whole rows of seats with passengers in them being found, as well as much of the cockpit of one of the planes, complete with the body of a suspected hijacker. Police cannot confirm these reports. 9/13/2001; GUARDIAN, 9/13/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 9/15/2001 Fire Lieutenant John McCole sees a body bag with a tag on it saying, “Possible Perp—pilot.” McCole later comments, “I found it pretty amazing that someone’s body could remain so intact after crashing through a skyscraper into the middle of an inferno.” 2002, PP. 57 Yet, contradicting the claim that a hijacker’s body was found, only in February 2003 are the remains of two hijackers identified (see Late February 2003). While all of these bodies and plane parts are supposedly found, it will be claimed that none of the four black boxes for the two aircraft that hit the WTC are ever found. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson later says: “It’s extremely rare that we don’t get the recorders back. I can’t recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders.” NEWS, 2/23/2002 The black boxes are considered “nearly indestructible,” are placed in the safest parts of the aircraft, and are designed to survive impacts much greater than the WTC impact. They can withstand heat of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour, and can withstand an impact of an incredible 3,400 G’s. NEWS, 9/17/2001 However, in 2004, it will be reported that some of the black boxes are found in the weeks after 9/11, but their discovery is kept secret (see October 2001). Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Mike Bellone, National Transportation Safety Board, John McCole Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 12-October 2001: Steel Debris From WTC Shipped Out of US for Recycling Steel beams from the WTC were already being removed and recycled on September 20, 2001. Associated Press In the month following 9/11, a significant amount of the steel debris from the WTC collapses is removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at a recycling plant or shipped out of the US. CONGRESS, 3/6/2002 Each of the Twin Towers contained 78,000 tons of recyclable steel. Much of this is shipped to India, China, and other Asian countries, where it will be melted down and reprocessed into new steel products. Asian companies are able to purchase the steel for just $120 per ton, compared, for example, to a usual average price of $150 per ton in China. Industry officials estimate that selling off the steel and other metals from the WTC for recycling could net a few tens of million dollars. YORK TIMES, 10/9/2001; REUTERS, 1/21/2002; REUTERS, 1/22/2002; EASTDAY, 1/24/2002; CORPWATCH, 2/6/2002 9/11 victims’ families and some engineers are angered at the decision to quickly discard the steel, believing it should be examined to help determine how the towers collapsed. A respected fire fighting trade magazine comments, “We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence.” ENGINEERING, 1/2002 Rep. Joseph Crowley (D) will later call the loss of this evidence “borderline criminal.” By March 2002, 150 pieces of steel from the WTC debris will have been identified by engineers for use in future investigations (see March 6, 2002). EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, 5/1/2002, PP. D-13 A study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which commences in August 2002 INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 8/21/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/21/2002 , will have 236 pieces of recovered steel available to it. Of these, 229 pieces are from WTC 1 and 2, representing “roughly 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent of the 200,000 tons of structural steel used in the construction of the two towers.” INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 9/2005, PP. 85 New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg defends the decision to quickly get rid of the WTC steel, saying, “If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that’s in this day and age what computers do. Just looking at a piece of metal generally doesn’t tell you anything.” Officials in the mayor’s office decline to reply to requests by the New York Times regarding who decided to have the steel recycled. YORK TIMES, 12/25/2001; EASTDAY, 1/24/2002 Entity Tags: World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 12, 2001-September 2005: Weight of WTC Towers in Dispute Ronald Hamburger, a member of NIST’s WTC team and advocate of the ‘piledriver’ theory. National Council of Structural Engineers' Associations After 9/11, the scientists investigating the WTC collapse give very different figures for the buildings’ weight. Some sources say that each building weighed 500,000 tons. For example, MIT professor Thomas Eager writes, “The total weight of each tower was about 500,000 t.” AMERICAN, 10/9/2001; EAGAR AND MUSSO, 12/2001; FRANK GREENING, 2/16/2006, PP. 23 ; PBS, 8/2006 However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states that the buildings weighed only 250,000 tons each. INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 9/2005, PP. 32 One theory explaining the building’s total collapse is that the upper section acts as a “piledriver” and smashes through the floors below it. 9/13/2001; STANFORD REPORT, 12/5/2001 The heavier the upper block above the impact zone, the more likely it is to be able to destroy the other floors as it falls. Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Thomas Eager, National Institute of Standards and Technology Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 12, 2001-September 2005: Duration of WTC Collapse in Dispute Following the attacks, there is no agreement on the speed with which the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11 (see 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001 and 10:28 a.m. September 11, 2001). The 9/11 Commission says that the South Tower collapsed in “ten seconds” and the National Institute of Standards and Technology says that tops of the buildings came down “essentially in free fall.” COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 305; NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 9/2005, PP. 146 In the dispute over the reason for the WTC’s collapse after 9/11, it is claimed that, if the towers fell in ten seconds, then this is evidence they were destroyed by explosives. For example, David Ray Griffin, a theologian and outspoken critic of commission’s report, writes, “For a 1,300-foot building, however, ten seconds is almost free-fall speed. But if each floor produced just a little resistance, so that breaking through each one took half a second, the collapse of all those floors—80 or 95 of them—would have taken 40 to 47 seconds. Can we really believe that the upper part of the buildings encountered virtually no resistance from the lower part?” 2004, PP. 16 But according to Canadian scientist Frank Greening, who studies the Twin Towers’ collapse, the freefall time would be about 9.6 seconds, and he calculates that it takes longer for the buildings to fall—twelve to thirteen and a half seconds—and states this does not indicate that explosives were used. BROADCASTING CORPORATION, 8/25/2005 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Frank Greening, National Institute of Standards and Technology, David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 12, 2001-February 2002: Witnesses See Molten Metal in the Remains at Ground Zero A chunk of hot metal being removed from the North Tower rubble about eight weeks after 9/11. Frank Silecchia In the weeks and months after 9/11, numerous individuals report seeing molten metal in the remains of the World Trade Center: Ken Holden, who is involved with the organizing of demolition, excavation and debris removal operations at Ground Zero, later will tell the 9/11 Commission, “Underground, it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the sides of the wall from WTC Building 6.” COMMISSION, 4/1/2003 William Langewiesche, the only journalist to have unrestricted access to Ground Zero during the cleanup operation, describes, “in the early days, the streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole.” 2002, PP. 32 Leslie Robertson, one of the structural engineers responsible for the design of the WTC, describes fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks. NEWS, 10/2001 Alison Geyh, who heads a team of scientists studying the potential health effects of 9/11, reports: “Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel.” HOPKINS PUBLIC HEALTH MAGAZINE, 2001 Ron Burger, a public health advisor who arrives at Ground Zero on September 12, says that “feeling the heat” and “seeing the molten steel” there reminds him of a volcano. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION, 9/2003, PP. 40 Paramedic Lee Turner arrives at the World Trade Center site on September 12 as a member of a federal urban search and rescue squad. While at Ground Zero, he goes “down crumpled stairwells to the subway, five levels below ground.” There he reportedly sees, “in the darkness a distant, pinkish glow—molten metal dripping from a beam.” NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 9/12/2002 According to a member of New York Air National Guard’s 109th Air Wing, who is at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6: “One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers’ remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots.” GUARD MAGAZINE, 12/2001 New York firefighters recall “heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel.” YORK POST, 3/3/2004 As late as five months after the attacks, in February 2002, firefighter Joe O’Toole sees a steel beam being lifted from deep underground at Ground Zero, which, he says, “was dripping from the molten steel.” RIDDER, 5/29/2002 Steven E. Jones, a physics professor from Utah, later will claim this molten metal is “direct evidence for the use of high-temperature explosives, such as thermite,” used to deliberately bring down the WTC towers. 11/16/2005 He will say that without explosives, a falling building would have “insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal.” MORNING NEWS, 11/10/2005 There is no mention whatsoever of the molten metal in the official reports by FEMA, NIST, or the 9/11 Commission. EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, 5/1/2002; 9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004; NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 9/2005 But Dr. Frank Gayle, who leads the steel forensics aspects of NIST’s investigation of the WTC collapses, is quoted as saying: “Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that’s what melted the steel. Indeed it didn’t, the steel did not melt.” NEWS 7 (NEW YORK), 2/7/2004 As well as the reports of molten metal, data collected by NASA in the days after 9/11 finds dozens of “hot spots” (some over 1,300 degrees) at Ground Zero (see September 16-23, 2001). Entity Tags: Ken Holden, Frank Gayle, Lee Turner, Leslie Robertson, Ron Burger, Steven E. Jones, Alison Geyh, World Trade Center, William Langewiesche, Joe O’Toole Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline (September 11, 2001-May 2002): Little-Known City Agency Takes Charge of Ground Zero Cleanup Operation Kenneth Holden. Public domain The New York City agency that oversees the Ground Zero cleanup operation following the 9/11 attacks is the Department of Design and Construction (DDC). AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 299 This obscure 1,300-man bureaucracy is normally responsible for overseeing municipal construction contracts, such as street repairs and jails. Its two top officials are Kenneth Holden and his lieutenant, Michael Burton. 2002, PP. 9 Burton is in lower Manhattan the morning of 9/11, instead of in his office in Queens, for a meeting at City Hall, just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. NEWS-RECORD, 4/22/2002 That afternoon, he meets Holden and together they begin organizing the cleanup operation. By 5:30 p.m., the group of workers they have assembled gains permission to explore the WTC ruins. Under Burton’s direction, the team of “unbuilders” subsequently undertakes what journalist William Langewiesche describes as “the most aggressive possible schedule of demolition and debris removal.” Yet this appears to go against established procedures. On previous occasions the standard emergency response to natural or man-made disasters in the US, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was to rapidly nationalize efforts on the ground, under the direction of FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. 2002, PP. 66, 90, 94, 146 New York’s official emergency plans, which were written before 9/11, in fact require the Department of Sanitation to remove debris after a building collapse. A mid-level official who was involved in writing the latest plans mentions a week after 9/11 that she doesn’t even know quite what the DDC is. DDC’s only previous experiences of dealing with emergencies are a sinking EMS station in Brooklyn, caused by a water leak, and a structural failure at Yankee Stadium. According to Langewiesche, there is no specific moment when Holden and Burton are placed in charge of the Ground Zero cleanup effort. “Rather, there was a shift of power in their direction that was never quite formalized and, indeed, was unjustified by bureaucratic logic or political considerations.” Reportedly, at some point, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a “back-room decision to scrap the organization charts, to finesse the city’s own Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and to allow the DDC to proceed.” 2002, PP. 66, 88 AND 118; ENGINEERING NEWS-RECORD, 4/22/2002 The Ground Zero cleanup operation officially ends in May 2002. NEWS, 5/16/2002; NEW YORK TIMES, 5/29/2002 Entity Tags: Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani, Michael Burton, Ken Holden, World Trade Center, New York City Department of Design and Construction Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline (September 12, 2001-May 2002): Recovery Workers Find WTC Pulverized to Dust from Collapses Workers involved in the cleanup at Ground Zero find that much of the World Trade Center towers and their contents have been pulverized to dust. Charlie Vitchers, a construction superintendent who oversees the operation, says, “Apart from recoveries, we didn’t find one thing. Nothing. Not even a file cabinet.… As we were working on the pile, people were saying, ‘We’re not finding anything.’” He adds, “We weren’t going to find anything that was made out of wood. But you think we would have found a computer.… We found cell phones. We found shoes. But with regard to furniture, nothing, not a thing, not a desk, not a wall panel.… For the most part there was nothing in the pile of debris that was recognizable.” Crane operator Bobby Gray says, “I don’t remember seeing carpeting or furniture. You’d think a metal file cabinet would make it, but I don’t remember seeing any, or phones, computers, none of that stuff. There were areas where there were no fires, which is not to say that they didn’t experience tremendous heat anyway. But even in areas that never burned we didn’t find anything.” He comments, “It was just so hard to comprehend that everything could have been pulverized to that extent. How do you pulverize carpet or filing cabinets?” VITCHERS, AND GRAY, 2006, PP. 143-144 According to Greg Meeker of the US Geological Survey, “Six million sq ft of masonry, 5 million sq ft of painted surfaces, 7 million sq ft of flooring, 600,000 sq ft of window glass, 200 elevators, and everything inside came down as dust” when the towers collapsed. “The only thing that didn’t get pulverized was the WTC towers’ 200,000 tons of structural steel.” AND ENGINEERING NEWS, 10/20/2003 Some people will later claim that this complete pulverization of the WTC is evidence of the towers having been brought down deliberately, using explosives. 2004, PP. 26; GRIFFIN AND SCOTT, 2006, PP. 46-47 Entity Tags: Gregory Meeker, World Trade Center, Bobby Gray, Charlie Vitchers Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline September 16, 2001: EPA Misleads Public about Health Risks at WTC Site Smoke from the WTC tower collapses covers lower Manhattan on the day of 9/11, and for days afterward. ABC News/ Associated Press The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) release a joint statement asserting that the air in downtown New York City is safe to breathe. “New samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern,” the agencies claim. PROTECTION AGENCY, 9/16/2001 However, the government’s statements are based on ambient air quality tests using outdated technologies. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 1/14/2002 Furthermore, it will later be learned that the press release was heavily edited under pressure from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Critical passages in the original draft were either deleted or modified to downplay public health risks posed by contaminants that were released into the air during the collapse of the World Trade Center. PROTECTION AGENCY, 8/21/2003 ; NEWSDAY, 8/26/2003 In late October, the New York Daily News will obtain internal EPA documents containing information that had been withheld from the public. One document says that “dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead, and chromium are among the toxic substances detected… sometimes at levels far exceeding federal levels.” YORK DAILY NEWS, 10/26/2001 Later, in October, it will be reported that thousands of rescue workers and residents are experiencing respiratory problems that experts attribute to the toxic smoke flume and ultra fine dust. 10/29/2001; NEW YORK POST, 10/29/2001; NEWSDAY, 10/30/2001; BBC, 10/31/2001 Entity Tags: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), World Trade Center, Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Protection Agency Timeline Tags: Environmental Impact of 9/11, 9/11 Timeline September 19-October 2001: Structural Engineer Finds Evidence of Extreme Temperatures at WTC Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl examines steel from the World Trade Center. University of California, Berkeley An engineer investigating the remains of the World Trade Center sees melted girders and other evidence that the towers experienced extreme temperatures on 9/11. Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in studying structural damage done by earthquakes and terrorist bombings. OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001; CBS NEWS, 3/11/2002 He arrives in New York on September 19 to conduct a two-week scientific reconnaissance of the collapsed towers, hoping to gain an understanding of how they had come down. His project is one of eight financed by the National Science Foundation to study the WTC disaster. YORK TIMES, 10/2/2001; BERKELEYAN, 10/3/2001; US CONGRESS. HOUSE. COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, 3/6/2002 He examines numerous pieces of steel taken from Ground Zero. OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001 Astaneh-Asl will describe the WTC as “the best-designed building I have ever seen.” FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/22/2001 Yet he notices unusual warping and other damage in its remaining steel: At a recycling center in New Jersey, he sees 10-ton steel beams from the towers that look “like giant sticks of twisted licorice.” OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001 He shows the San Francisco Chronicle a “banana-shaped, rust-colored piece of steel” that has “twisted like toffee during the terrorist attack.” FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/22/2001 He later recalls, “I saw melting of girders in the World Trade Center.” 5/10/2007 He notes that steel has bent at several connection points that had joined the floors of the WTC to the vertical columns. He describes the connections as being smoothly warped, saying, “If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted—it’s kind of like that.” He adds, “That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot—perhaps around 2,000 degrees.” OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 12/7/2001 Astaneh-Asl says that steel flanges have been reduced “from an inch thick to paper thin.” 10/3/2001 He finds a foot-long twisted shard of steel that is “like a piece of bread, but it was high-strength steel.” He comments, “I haven’t seen anything like this before.” DAILY PLANET, 10/20/2001 He finds “severely scorched steel members from 40 or so floors below the points of impact the planes.” He believes this is the result of the planes having destroyed the elevator walls, thereby allowing burning jet fuel to pour down into the building, igniting fires hundreds of feet below the impact floors. NEWS, 3/12/2002 He says that, in some places, the fireproofing used to protect the WTC steel has “melted into a glassy residue.” YORK TIMES, 10/2/2001 Astaneh-Asl sees a charred I-beam from WTC Building 7, which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11. “The beam, so named because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.” YORK TIMES, 10/2/2001 Other individuals will report seeing molten metal in the remains of the World Trade Center in the weeks and months after 9/11 (see September 12, 2001-February 2002), and data collected by NASA reveals dozens of “hot spots” (some over 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit) at Ground Zero (see September 16-23, 2001). But Thomas Eagar—an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—later comments that the “temperature of the fire at the WTC 9/11 was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel.” AND MUSSO, 12/2001 Yet Astaneh-Asl will later put forward the “tentative” conclusion, “The collapse of the Towers was most likely due to the intense fire initiated by the jet fuel of the planes and continued due to burning of the building contents.” 11/30/2003 Astaneh-Asl is a member of the team assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate the World Trade Center site after 9/11 (see September 12, 2001), though he will resign from this because he disagrees with its decision to keep findings secret until the initial inquiry has been completed. YORK TIMES, 10/2/2001; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/6/2002 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Thomas Eagar, Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline (September 25, 2001 and after): Ground Zero Workers Find Compressed Floors and Shattered Core Columns of WTC Two weeks after 9/11, engineers Pablo Lopez and Andrew Pontecorvo are walking in the B2 basement level at the ruins of the World Trade Center, towards where the North Tower stood. They discover a “solid, rocklike mass where the basement levels of the tower had been,” and see “the recognizable traces of twenty floors, very much like geologic strata revealed by a road cut, compressed into a ten-foot vertical span. In one place, the steel decks of half a dozen floors protruded like tattered wallpaper, so close together that they were almost touching where they were bent downward at the edge. Nothing between the decks was recognizable except as a rocky, rusty mishmash. In a few places what might have been carbonized, compressed stacks of paper stuck out edgewise like graphite deposits.” As New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton describe, Lopez and Pontecorvo have found “where the vanished floors the tower had gone. They had not just fallen straight down. The forces had been so great and the floors so light that they had simply folded up like deflated balloons.” Furthermore, they see the massive core columns of the tower, which are over two feet wide and made of four-inch thick steel plate, appearing to have suffered “a compound fracture: the upper sections looked as if they had been kicked, with incalculable fury, about a foot south of the sections they were resting on.” Lopez remarks, “Can you imagine the force?” AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 292-293 At some later time, ironworker Danny Doyle, who is also working at Ground Zero, finds that floors of the South Tower have been compressed into a formation like what happened with the North Tower’s. He discovers “a distinct mound of debris set into the pile, about six feet high, with strands of wire and pieces of rebar sticking out. It looked like layers of sediment that had turned into rock and been lifted up on some mountainside.… Here were ten stories of the South Tower, compacted into an area of about six feet.” AND LIPTON, 2004, PP. 310 Entity Tags: Danny Doyle, Pablo Lopez, Andrew Pontecorvo, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Late September 2001-November 26, 2001: Theft of WTC Steel Leads to Tight Security Measures The New York Police and FBI are investigating the theft of over 250 tons of steel from the remains of the collapsed WTC towers. Apparently, the steel was hauled away by trucks involved in the official clear-up operation (see September 12-October 2001), but instead of being taken to Fresh Kills—the FBI-controlled dump on Staten Island where it was intended to go—the steel was driven to three independently-owned scrapyards, two in New Jersey and one on Long Island. The London Telegraph says the scrap metal value of the stolen steel would have been roughly $17,500. Investigators believe the theft was organized by one of New York’s Mafia families. TELEGRAPH, 9/29/2001 Consequently, on November 26, 2001, the city initiates use of an in-vehicle Global Positioning System (GPS), to monitor the locations of nearly 200 trucks removing steel from the WTC collapse site, at a cost of $1,000 per unit. This system sends out alerts if any truck travels off course or arrives late at its destination. One driver involved with the clear-up operation is subsequently dismissed simply for taking an extended lunch break. CONTROL AND SECURITY SYSTEMS, 7/2002 Entity Tags: World Trade Center, New York City Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline